Ed Ranks Memes (Part I)

Ranking Memes is obviously one of these.

Ah, memes! There are tons of them. Definitely a lot more than fifty. But I'm just going to stop at fifty, because that's already plenty. If your favorite meme isn't there... too bad. It's just not funny enough.

This is part one, consisting of Memes ranked #50 to #26. 

50. Loss (| || || |_) - Look, I get the "Loss" meme, mocking the Cntl+Alt+Delete comic strip. It's just not that funny. Don't try to tell me that I "don't get it," because I do.

49. Goatse - If you don't know this one, maybe you should Google Image Search it. With "Safe Mode" disabled. At work. Go ahead, do it. What are you, yellow?

48. Ancient Aliens Guy - There isn't much to this one. I'm leaving off a lot of so-called memes which are just one-for-one taken from television as "Isn't it funny how weird / eccentric / funny" this person/joke is. I usually like my "memes" to add something. The Ancient Aliens guy, as a meme, doesn't really add anything innovative. It's just "Oh hey, that guy on that show is an 'expert' but not really because he has crazy hair and just says 'Aliens did everything.' Funny, huh?"

47. Nope! Chuck Testa - This daxidermy commercial-based meme has its moment in the sun for a very short time about a decade ago. Then it vanished to the meme graveyard.

46. Surprised Pikachu - Pikachu makes a face that is like, "Whoa, I can't believe the shit I just saw." It's moderately funny.

Honestly... WTF?

45. Nyan Cat - Animal-based memes typically rate very high for me, as you'll soon see. Nyan Cat, though? Okay. A cat that is also a pop tart who flies in space from a rainbow. It's cute. It's odd. But it doesn't throw too much "funny" at me though. Although it is a bit on the earlier side, as memes go. A great example of what direction the internet would be taking for the second decade of the new millenium.

44. Roll Safe - Even if you don't know anything about Hood Documentary (which I didn't), you've probably seen the image of this guy pointing at his head as if he just had a super brilliant idea. The joke is always that the brilliant idea isn't that brilliant and is instead self-destructive or based on shit logic. It's usually worth a moderate guffaw.

43. Chocolate Rain - Chocolate Rain benefits from being "early" in the era of memes. It's earliness makes it memorable, as it came from a time when videos of weird randos weren't as prolific as they are now. This was never, even in its heyday, "funny." It was just strange and somehow became super viral before "viral" was even a term that people used.

42. Sweet Brown / Ain't Nobody Got Time for That - I understand that it's always problematic for the local news station to interview someone with the explicit intent to get some "wacky ghetto person" on camera for everyone to laugh at. This could go down there with the "Crichton Leprechaun" video, or the Charles Ramsay "Mac-Donalds" interview, but at least the internet remixes of Sweet Brown (auto-tuning and turning her interview into a song) made it a little more memorable and funny.

Now this song will be in your head... forever.

41. Bed Intruder / Antoine Dodson - Everything I just said for Sweet Brown? Rinse and repeat for "Bed Intruder," except that this one is a little bit funnier and the Bed Intruder song was HOT FIRE. Hide your kids, hide your wife.

40. Xzibit / Yo Dawg - Yo Dawg, I heard you like Ranks. So I put a rank in your rank so you can rank while you rank.

39. Bert is Evil - Do you remember this one? If you are young, you will not. If you thought any of the memes I mentioned above were "old," then this one is freaking NEOLITHIC. This bad boy dates to 1997, a solid 22 years ago. Basically it's just Bert from Sesame Street, but photo-shopped with evil figures like Hitler and Bin Laden, or into historic situations like the JFK Assassination. I thought this was hilarious when I was in High School and it was a solid decade before I ever even heard the word "meme." Still, this was a meme even if that term wasn't being widely used yet.

38. Damnit, Moon Moon - You know those "name maker" things where you take the first letter of your first name and the first letter of your last name to make a new name dedicated to whatever the theme is? Ah, well there once was a "Werewolf Name Generator," and alas the word "Moon" was in both sections, so someone whose first name began with "P" and last name with "W" would get "Moon Moon" as a result. Thus the mocking and image macros began, making fun of a very dumb wolf named Moon Moon.

Dunn dunn DUNNNNNN!

37. Dramatic Chipmunk - Dramatic Chipmunk was hilarious for a hot minute, and it got SUPER big. There were people in the office talking about it and emailing it around in a way I typically never saw normal people sharing Internet Memes up to that point. Of course, everyone knows it was a prairie dog and not a chipmunk, right? They couldn't even name this thing right.

36. Firestarter / Disaster Girl - This is just a picture of a little girl smiling menacingly while there is a raging fire in the background and firemen trying to put it out. Did she start the fire herself? Does she just enjoy the suffering of others? Whatever the truth behind the menacing smile, one thing remains clear - children are evil.

35. Picard Facepalm - Just a collection of various pictures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard facepalming when he hears something stupid. Basically, can be used as a reply to almost 70% of all things posted on message boards or Twitter.

Tide goes in, Tide goes out. You can't explain that.

34. Rage Comics - These  are actually quite popular and prolific. They include a number of pretty notable, poorly-drawn-in-MS-Paint stick figures or tracings of images such as the Rageguy, Trollface, Derp, Forever Alone Guy, Me Gusta, Yao Ming, etc.  Despite how prolific and important they are to "meme culture" (if such a thing exists), I don't really find any of them that particularly funny. The only exception would probably be the Neil deGrasse Tyson "Looks like We Got a Badass" meme, which is always a good message board/Twitter reply to some Bro.

33. Confused Nick Young / Blinking White Guy (TIE) - NBA player Nick Young made a very perplexed face when his mom called him a clown. That perplexed face is now the perfect response to post when something batshit crazy is happening or someone says something dumb as shit. UNLESS, OF COURSE... you prefer to go with Confused Nick Young's melanin-deprived cousin, the Blinking White Guy (Drew Scanlon), who just has a look of utter contempt mixed with confusion and disbelief at the stupid shit he just heard someone else say.  Both of these are SOLID MEMES.

32. 2 Girls, 1 Cup (and Reactions) - If you don't know what this is by now then... well... congrats for having your virgin eyes saved.  I have seen a tiny bit of this, but not much. Like everyone else, someone told me to watch it all the way through. I did not. Much better than the video itself though, are the reaction videos to people who were able to somehow make it all the way through. The look of shock and horror on their faces is funny. Or sometimes, they have totally different reactions.

31. It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!! - If I have another conversation with someone who says that this "came from Family Guy," I will punch them in their face. It doesn't matter where I am. At work. In front of a cop. At a funeral. Wherever. This is another oldschool meme.

30. What Are Those? - This 2015 Vine video making fun of footwear could have easily gone the way of Chuck Testa (or, you know, like Vine itself) to be totally forgotten. Yet somehow it kept hanging on. Finally, it wound up in the Black Panther movie which made a bajillion dollars, so it doesn't look like it's going anywhere.

So magical

29. Double Rainbow - What does it mean?

28. Hide The Pain Harold - Hide the Pain Harold is a stock image guy of an older gentleman doing mundane tasks. But the face of the stock image model is, in almost every photo, showing a slight bit of awkward discomfort (like he needs to take a shit during the photo shoot, but doesn't want to be impolite to the photographer). It got big enough so that the "Harold" behind the photos (actually a Ukrainian electrical engineer) wound up doing Ted Talks. 

27. Spider-Man 1967 - The Animated 1967 to 1970 Spider-Man cartoon was weird, poorly animated, and psychedelic. Thus a lot of totally batshit crazy still frames and video clips are basically just bait for equally batshit crazy memes.

26. That's Racist! - A little kid who shouts "That's Racist!," taken from the MTV2 show Wonder Showzen. Can be used very prolifically on the internet in reply to things written by other people because, well, half of everything people write on the Internet is racist.

Ed Ranks Dracula's Missing Pieces from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

The soundtrack to this game is amazing, BTW.

In the 1987 (1988 in the United States) video game Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, you (as vampire hunter Simon Belmont) must assemble five "missing pieces" of Dracula and put them back together. Why? Well, it turns out that despite the fact that Simon Belmont defeated Dracula in the first video game, it wasn't before Dracula put a curse on him. For some reason, Simon has to go and re-kill Dracula AGAIN to lift the curse. It's not explained all that well, but then again it doesn't have to be because it's a freaking amazing game. Dracula is cut apart and still cursing people. Reassemble him (his parts have been conveniently left in five different castles) and do the job right this time! Makes enough sense to me.

What exactly do you have to reassemble though? Thanks for asking!

5. Ring 

Okay. This one makes zero sense at all. First and foremost, as you will probably quickly realize (even if you are as bad of a biology student as I was in High School), a "ring" is not a part of the body.  All this video game had to do was name five body parts and they'd have gotten their mission accomplished. They couldn't though. They names four body parts and then a ring. That's just something that Dracula wore. Sure, I guess a ring could be cool and everything. Maybe it's a ring with powers and stuff. Maybe this powerful ring holds the key to the curse somehow! It would make sense, right? Well if you'd play this video game you'd know that as you find the five castles with Dracula's five parts, you'll learn that each of the parts has a special power if you "equip" it after finding it. COOL! So what is the special power of the ring?  Nothing. Equipping the ring does absolutely nothing.  Oh, the ring isn't 100% worthless. You have to find all five body parts to enter Dracula's (final) castle and beat the game. So you need it. But what can you do with it? Nothing.

• Location: Laruba Mansion, which sounds like a timeshare Dracula got tricked into buying.
• Power:  Jack Shit.
• What the Power Should Have Been: Anything, really! A magical ring should let you can spells at least. Make you invisible? Reduce the damage you take by half? I dunno. They could have justified almost any power with this ring. But they didn't.

4. Nail

Look at those... nails? No wait.

So this one is technically a body part... but... uhh... really? Again. The theme/plot is fairly straight forward. Somebody cut up Dracula into five pieces, hoping that would defeat his evil once and for all. It didn't work. Reassemble him. I could easily come up with five body parts off the top of my head, two of which actually made it into this game. Nail though? Like... finger nail or something? I hope so. I hope it's not a toenail. If it's a toenail, then Simon is probably only collecting it because he's one of those strange toe fetish guys. ANYWAY... looking at the image for the nail, it doesn't even look like a nail. It looks like a damn fang (like in the cat picture on the right). That's right, the image is of Vlad Tepes's bitey maxillary canine fang. You know, the stabbing for blood-sucking one. If it's a "nail" then Dracula must have talons like a bird rather than actual fingers. I looked at a lot of images of what Dracula looks like in the Castlevania series, and I gotta say it looks like this vampire dude just has normal human fingers. At least the nail has a power though. If you equip it, your whip can destroy certain blocks. But then again, if you're equipping Holy Water as your secondary magic item (which you should always do, by the way), then the nail is fairly useless.

• Location: Bodley Mansion, which is the Mansion where Dracula goes to get a ripped bod.
• Power: Your whip can destroy blocks like Holy Water.
• What the Power Should Have Been: If they called it a "fang" and it was related to sucking blood, it could have been related to Simon's health bar. Like maybe if you get it you can "level up" your health bar a little bit.

3. Heart

Pictured: Heart

The heart of Dracula is EXACTLY the type of body part you should put in this game, so I'm glad it's in here. If I were scripting a video game where you had to reassemble Dracula's dead body from five missing pieces, I would pick the heart as the first item on the "must" list.  So why is this ranked so low when it makes so much sense? Well, once again it's due to the limited power / use of equipping the heart. All the heart does is allow the Ferryman on the River of the Dead to Brahm's Mansion.  Otherwise, he won't! You HAVE to get to Brahm's Mansion to finish the game, so you've got to equip the Heart at least once. But it's really only a one-trick pony.

• Location: Rover Mansion, the mansion where Dracula keeps his pet dog.
• Power: Convinces Charon, Ferryman of the Dead that you should get a trip.
• What the Power Should Have Been:  There are other hearts that you collect throughout the game. They give you experience and are also "consumable" items (there are weapons and secondary items you can equip like knives and a sacred flame - and using them costs hearts). Linking Dracula's hearts to these hearts should be common sense, and maybe equipping this would make those heart-consumable items not consume hearts (or reduce consumption by half?).

2. Eye

I like "eye," although I would have personally called it "eyes." What is Dracula going to do with one eye? Come back as a pirate? As with the heart, this is one of the body parts I would have chosen myself to include in things you need to reassemble Dracula. It also serves a pretty cool purpose - equipping the eye allows you to see blocks in the game that has hidden items in them for you to collect. Remember how I said that the Nail allows you to break apart these hidden blocks? Well, it's the Eye that allows you to even see them in the first place to know where they are. It's either that or you just randomly smash endless bottles of Holy Water against random surfaces all over the place everywhere. Which is exactly what I did because I almost never equipped the eye.

• Location: Brahm's Mansion, where Dracula frequently enjoyed the works of the famed German composer and pianist.
• Power: See hidden items/breakable blocks.
• What the Power Should Have Been: No change from me here, as this one was right on and made perfect sense. Good work, game.

1. Rib Bone

Mmm, some smoked babyback Dracula!

Somewhat cryptically, the very first piece of Dracula's body you can equip is the rib, as it's found in Berkeley Mansion very early in the game. It's just one rib though. One. Rib. Not his "ribs." Only one rib. I dunno about you, but if I assembled one eye, one rib, a heart, a finger nail (or canine tooth) and a ring into a pile, I do not think it would resemble the completed and reassembled dead body of the Prince of Darkness. It would look like random leftovers. Odd. Also, the image of the rib used in the game absolutely looks like a femur. Not a rib. Still though, once you equip Dracula's rib, you essentially use it as a shield. When you stand still in the game, almost any projectile thrown at you will bounce off. Niiiiiiice! Although I'm imagining running around and using someone's rib bones as my shield. People would absolutely look at me like I was an insane sociopath serial killer.  Does that stop me from using the Rib though? Absolutely not. After I get it from the first castle, I generally keep it equipped for almost the entire game (absent the times I need to equip something else like the heart for a one-use trick).

• Location: Berkeley Mansion, where Vlad hangs out with his annoyingly over-liberal friends, but only to bum some weed from them.
• Power: Creates a Shield that Deflects Projectiles.
• What the Power Should Have Been: Eh, this is a perfectly find use because I use it all game long. Yet like I said, it's super weird that you're using someone's bone as a shield.

Ed Ranks Medieval Ranged Weapons

The theme continues. This time... ranged weapons! For this, I will include both ranged weapons held in hand, as well as larger "siege weapons." These are all weapons that can kill you and damage your infrastructure from afar, rather than the swords and other melee weapons I most recently ranked.

I'm going to basically declare the end of "Medieval" times to coincide with the arrival of gunpowder. So this list will not include Culverins or other early Cannon, the Arquebus, etc. So that's the back end. What about the front end? I do indeed understand that some of these weapons (e.g. the bow and arrow are older than civilization itself) are actually ancient rather than Medieval. However, if they were still being used in Medieval times, I'm going to continue to include them. Just because Oog the Caveman invented the Bow and Arrow and some Greek invented the Ballista doesn't mean I won't talk about them.

6. Sling

You have to be poorer than the guys who use Quarterstaffs if you're going to resort to this weapon.

The story of David and Goliath might impress you that a Sling is an effective weapon. I am unimpressed and unconvinced though.  

5. Ballista

Honestly, I think he's just going to shoot the horse in the head.

As mentioned, this goes back to Greek times. It's essentially a big ol' crossbow that fires a bolt. A Harpax is a Roman version, and the Scorpion on Game of Thrones is basically just the same thing. It's cool, but still only #5.

4. Throwing Blades

These people were NOT playing around.

 A pretty wide category, which includes various cultures' throwing knives or throwing axes (the latter of which includes the francisca). This also inludes things like the Indian Chakram (which I call "cool, spinny kill disc"); central African Kulbeda, Pinga and Trombash; southern African Mambele; and the Japanese Shuriken (colloquially "Ninja Stars") or Kunai. The concept behind all of these weapons? It's sharp. You throw it at someone. You kill or hurt them. I guess you could add a "throwing spear" into this category as well, right?

3. Bow

Get ready for it to rain death!

The bow and arrow is as old as humanity itself, but it had an especially great and effective run during Medieval times. I'm just going to throw all of the bow and arrows together here as one type, but for purposes of medieval warfare use - know that we're talking specifically about both the Longbow (super tall, no real recurve shape to it), and the Recurve Bow (like the Composite Bow and Mongol Bow). Gather a bunch of archers. Have then shoot a ton of arrows all at once. Let gravity do the rest. FUN! You mostly had to be fairly skilled to use these things though. I'll talk more about that later.

2. Petrary (Siege Engines)

Your castle walls BOUT TO GO DOWN, SON.

You may not be super familiar with the term, but "Petrary" refers to ranged siege engines, including the Trebuchet (it uses a swinging arm and a counterweight to throw a projectile), Catapult (using a cantilever spring and a released restraining rope to throw a projectile), and the Mangonel (also called a Traction Trebuchet, and working the same way except using manpower to swing the arm rather than a counterweight). You load up these bad boys with a payload of stuff that will do some damage (big rocks typically, although dead bodies was also an option for early innovators of biological warfare. Very effective. Right now you might be wondering why the Ballista isn't included in here. Well, that's because Ballistas shoot bolts or arrows, and this would technically not fit into the definition of Petrary.

1. Crossbow

The most skilled military tacticians of all time did not kill Richard the Lionheart. An idiot with a Crossbow did.

I love me some Crossbow! Though it might have had its origins in China as well as be influenced the larger ballista and the Roman scorpio, by Medieval times the European Crossbow (and the Arbalest) really revolutionized war and the ability to quickly, effectively killing people. Why? Crossbows weren't that much different in principle than the ancient bow, which was still widely used in war. But bowmen/archers are artists. Bowmen require specialized training which takes years to develop the finesse, strength, and skill needed to operate a bow and arrow with any degree of accuracy. Because of that, bowmen were often treated as a special warrior caste, better than the other foot soldiers in war. Which means if they died in battle, you were losing a very precious and skilled commodity, as opposed to the dumb peasants who you give cheap melee weapons to. In some cultural traditions, archers were basically trained from youth. A crossbow, on the other hand, evened that playing field and essentially gave the common, poorly-trained soldier the ability to effectively (and somewhat accurately) shoot out very similar killing bolts. Were untrained Crossbowmen conscripted into the armies as effective as highly trained archers? Of course not. But if you take the comparative costs of the two, the Crossbow was a lot cheaper and allowed any military to field an insanely deadly ranged force. The jump from bow to Crossbow was probably about the same as the jump from Crossbow to gun, in terms of revolutionizing war to make it more deadly. However, I still think the Crossbow is better than the gun. Guns have big, loud, bang-ey noises that are lame and give you away. The Crossbow is still relatively silent. I'm not saying that we should all be armed with Crossbows to this day, but I am... no... wait... I am saying that. CROSSBOWS FOR EVERYONE!

Ed Ranks Swords

As quasi promised last time, now I'm going to talk about swords. It's actually pretty hard to classify swords. There are all sorts of ways to do it. By hilt type. By blade type. By country. By era.  It's more of an art than a science.  Whatever. I'm going to rank 20 "types" of swords in a manner that I feel is appropriate. No, it will not include every type of sword out there. Some will be missing. Eh. That's just how it is. If you don't see your favorite sword there, I'm probably just classifying it as a subset of one of the below. Sorry if you think an Ashanti "Akrafena" or an Indonesian "Golol" are different enough from a Cutlass for me to call them their own things... because I don't.

Also note, that I'm making a length distinction that does not include what most people would call "knives" or "daggers." Which means I won't rank awesome things like the Katar (so awesome!) or the Kris.

20. Rapier

Real warriors don't shout "en garde!" They just stab.

Rapiers are boring and used for lame stuff like fencing, duels, and ceremonial battle. If you were on a battlefield with a rapier, you'd be screwed pretty fast.  I know Arya's Needle might seem like it's cool, but it's not. Arya is cool. Needle is a lame Rapier. Civilization really took a step back when it got rid of awesome, hulking swords and downgraded to these sidearms.

19. Ye Olde Bronze and Iron Age Swords (Various)

Gladius, just one of many examples.

If any of my 20 "types" of swords here is overly generalized, it's this one. I'm just throwing all of the ancient swords that go up to the end of the Iron Age in the Mid Hundreds AD period together in this same pot o swords. Many of them are fairly unsophisticated straight, metal swords like the Xiphos, Gladius, Acinaces, Roman Spatha, Chinese Jian, or Japanese Tsurugi (although some have some curvature, like the Falcata). They're pretty similar with a few differences about their length, whether they're single or double-edged, etc.  I won't lose any sleep over all of these different swords being thrown together.  I did, however, pull out two separate ancient weapons from this era and single them out in the rankings below - because they have some unique cool things about them.

18. Hook Sword

Kabal from Mortal Combat is, alas, not an actual historic figure. Also this picture cuts off the hook part, which is dumb and thus makes it a really bad picture to use. Oh well.

The Chinese hook sword (shuang gou) is cool in principle. Its handle area is cool, you can stab with it, and you can hook and pull away other people's weapons with it. It would rank higher if it were more of an actual historic weapon though, as claims about them being an ancient and/or medieval-era weapon are highly dubious. In actuality, they're probably more of a modern weapon designed to look super cool.

17. Side Sword

Better than a Rapier, but not by much.

Also known as the "Spada da lato," the side sword is sort of an intermediate sword that was used mostly in the 1500's as the classical one-handed, double-edged  knightly/arming sword was going out of fashion and the typical arming swords was headed to what would become the Rapier.  As you saw above, I'm not a fan of Rapiers. Since the Side Sword is sort of 25% Knightly Sword and 75% Rapier, it's not going to be ranked high. 

16. Kampilan

Well, this is nifty.

This Filipino sword is unique enough so that I can't really put it under any of the other types of swords which I am ranking. Visually it is sort of reminiscent of some other ones, but I'm going to just say that it's it's own thing and move on.

15. Harpe

A sword that nobody probably actually used (who isn't a fictional god).

 A Harpe is one of those two Bronze/Iron Age swords that I alluded to wthat I separated from the general category.  It's basically a boring Xiphos or Gladius-like sword, but with a bit of a hook/sickle protrusion hanging out of it. It's that mini sickle which makes the sword cool enough to rank on its own. But I won't rank it that high, as the weapon doesn't appear to have really been used that much, if at all. In fact, the weapon may have only been used in art and legends from mythology. Oh well. 

14. Kalis

I mentioned that I didn't rank the Kris because I consider it to be a knife, not a sword. Well, the Kalis is a Filipino weapon much like the Kris, except long enough to be classified as a sword.  The basic reason it's sweet is because it's got a "wavy" blade. The wavy potion allows for better slashing in battle, as straight blades tend to get stuck people's bones and nobody wants that. The person stabbing doesn't want their sword stuck in someone's bone. A person being stabbed doesn't want someone's sword stuck in their bone. That's no good, all sides agree. Technically I could have ranked other wavy-bladed swords rather than this one, as "flame-bladed" or "wave-bladed" swords are indeed somewhat common. However, most of those swords are actually just sub-types of others, such as the Longsword, with some waviness added to the blade. This, on the other hand, is fairly unique. 

13.  Viking Sword

Almost a cool Knightly Sword, but not quite there yet.

Viking Swords (sometimes also called Carolingian Swords) were yet another "transitional" type of weapon, linking the Roman Age weapons like the Spatha to the more famous medieval Knightly Sword.  These are the swords of the "Dark Ages" and would be the types that people  like Charlemagne used. Legendary King Arthur's Excalibur would, hypothetically, be one of these because the types of swords we  imagine Excalibur look liking wouldn't be invented for hundreds of years. 

12.  Shōtō (Japanese Short Swords)

Wakizashi, the lil' Samurai Sword

This would include swords such as Wakizashi or Kodachi. There are a lot of fetishists who are overly obsessed with Japanese swords (generally , "Nihontō") and who would likely argue with my categorizations of them. These people would likely want to break every individual sword out as their own, unique ranking and explain the subtle differences. I don't care. I'm going to simply divide the vast majority of Japanese swords up into two types - the first of which are these Shōtō.  Basically, Japan classifies swords by length in units called "shaku" (sort of like the Japanese version of the English "foot") - with blades less than one shaku being "Tantō" (which I'd call knives or daggers, and hence will leave off this list). These are the middle-ranged ones that are between one and two shaku. Yeah, yeah. It's a baby Katana. Let's move on.

11. Broadsword

This one is fairly cool, I suppose.

Also called the "Basket-Hilted Sword," this is basically a much cooler version of a Side Sword or a Rapier that could be used in actual battles and military actions, especially by cavalry.  The Broadsword has that nice, thick (one could say... BROAD, eh?), double-edged blade (usually, one-edged blades exist but those are typically called "Backswords") that the classic swords had, combined with the more modern basket-shaped guards to protect them fingers from the ol
hack and slash. The Indian sword called a Firangi is also very similar to the Broadsword, so I'm going to just say that a Firangi is a subset of this type. The Indians have another sword called a Khanda which is also super awesome. I initially ranked it on its own, but I decided that maybe it's a type of Broadsword. Perhaps. I'm having doubts now. Whatever. What's done is done and I'm not renumbering these things or adding a 21st one.

10. Dao / Dha 

Version from the 1700s, but there is a lot of variety for these.

Another bit off a mixed bag that include a large number of swords. The Chinese "Dao" and the Southeast Asian "Dha" are fairly similar and I'm going to go ahead and declare them as their own sword type. Initially, I was going to simply classify them as a form of Sabre, because they really are a lot like a Sabre. However, some Dao are more similar to a Broadsword than a Sabre, and both the Dao and Dha sometimes have more similarities to the Japanese Nihontō swords than their Western counterparts. In the end, there are probably dozens of different sub-categories of Dao, but it seems like too much research to get into.

9. Cutlass

Yarrrr.

As with the  Dao / Dha, I initially was going to just throw Cutlasses in with a more general category, in this case the upcoming category of "Sabres." Eventually, I decided to break them up because there were enough differences between the two and because ranking 20 types of swords is a lot more appealing than ranking 19 types (from an OCD standpoint). Yes, by definition a Cutlass is indeed a short, broad type of Sabre. But that shortness and broadness of it makes it different enough to separate out, says me. I also think of pirates and navy people using Cutlasses, as opposed to Sabres (which are instead being used by guys on horses... a least in the fictional battles happening in my head as I write this). I'm going to go ahead and categorize Machetes as a type of Cutlass too, so they go here. Agree? Disagree? It doesn't matter, because I am doing it. 

8. Sabre

White people's more boring version of a Scimitar, basically under-seasoned and boiled.

You know exactly what a Sabre is, hopefully. It's a long, single-edged, curved sword often associated with cavalry. It's pretty cool, and versions of Sabres are used all over the world because, quite frankly, they're pretty effective. Included in this category of Sabre, I'm also counting the Falchion (although the Falchion is super similar to the Chinese Dao), as well as the Cossack Shashka and Indian Talwar.

7. Pata 

Probably not that effective but I WANT ONE.

I'm not sure how practical the Indian Pata is in battle, but it looks FREAKING AWESOME. Basically, it's a long Broadsword but with the hilt of the sword being built into a gauntlet (hence the name "Gauntlet Sword," which is also sometimes used). Based on the way you'd have to hold the sword with a stiff, largely inflexible wrist, I imagine the sword would more effective if used like a spear than a sword... but what do I know? 

6.  Khopesh

Is this sweet looking or what? Good design work, Egyptians! A+ on your sword design project. This is your best work professionally since inventing the pyramids.

The Ancient Egyptian Khopesh (AKA Sickle-Sword) is probably the closest military weapon from actual history to resemble the fictional Dothraki Arakh (although the sickle wasn't quite as rounded, as that would probably be impractical in battle). As with the Chinese Hook Sword mentioned above, the curvature of the Khopesh could be practical as it allowed you to hook and pull away your opponent's weapon in addition to using the slashy, curved part of your sword to kill. Good weapon, and hence why I decided to separate it out from the rest of the Bronze and Iron Age swords that I lumped and ranked together.

5. Longsword

Sword? Check. Long? Check. Guys, I think we figured out a name for it!

We are definitely in top five time now! The Longsword is the famous long, two-handed, cruciform hilted, double-edged blade sword that was used from the late middle ages up through the Renaissance and beyond. It is awesome and you should be able to imagine a lot of hacking and slashing going on with this epic weapon. The downside is that the two-handed nature of it means you really can't have a shield or free hand. The upside is the massive blows you can inflict.  I'm categorizing the German Zweihänder as a Longsword, although some would say it's a unique successor. Also, I'll say the Estoc is also just a Longsword. The famous "Bastard Sword" is also somewhat hard to categorize - and while I was about to separate it as its own type, I decided to just include it here. Different people give different definitions... but basically the Bastard Sword is just a Longsword that's halfway between that and a Knighly Sword. It could therefore be used with either one or two hands. A number of Bastard Swords were just damaged Longswords which were cut down to make the somewhat more flexible hybrid version.

4. Scimitar

Here we go! Now that's a cool sword.

The Scimitar-type weapon (also called a Saif) is the awesome, cool, superior Middle Eastern OG version of the lower-ranked and later-developed European Sabre. Long, light weight, curved, single-edged, and made to be held with a single hand. The curving was good for slashing, especially when used on horseback. This was something Europeans hadn't figured out yet when they began to clash with Middle Easterners and North Africans during the Crusades, as they were still mainly focused on their straight one-handed Knightly Swords. They would learn from such mistakes and eventually copycat the Scimitar and evolve it into the Sabre. I started this by saying "Scimitar-type" weapon, because there are actually a number of swords like this, which include the Turkish Kilij, Persian Shamshir, Afghani Pulwar, Ethiopian Shotel, and others. 

3. Claymore

More like, KILL MORE, am I right?

The Claymore (sometimes also called Great Sword, although other swords are also called that) is, yes, technically a type of Longsword. However, this Scottish variant is different enough to be listed on its own, especially as its design does sort of also include aspects of the later Broadsword and of the earlier Knightly Sword. This giant, heavy, double-edged, two-handed cruciform hilt with pommel is heavily associated with Scottish clan warfare and you're probably picturing William Wallace fighting with one. Alas, he did not as the Claymore didn't even come until existence until about a century after Wallace died. Unlike a more traditional Swiss Longsword which has a fairly straight blade up until the foible (the weaker part of the sword near the tip, as opposed to the stronger part, the forte, near the hilt), the blade of the Claymore is typically wider near the hilt and then slowly gets narrower towards the tip (as you'll see in the picture above). It is also somewhat longer than most of the Longswords of its era. This massive blade could sure do some crazy damage to armor and/or flesh.

2. Daitō (Japanese Long Swords, including the Katana)

I guess I could have gone for some picture that was more traditional and less "Cosplay," but whatever.

 So here we finally arrive. The famous Katana is a type of Daitō, which from the previously referenced Japanese shaku measuring system would measure two or more shaku, as opposed to the shorter Shōtō.  Other notable Daitō other than the Katana include the curvier Tachi, and the even longer Ōdachi, which is a craaaaaazy long sword. These swords (as you probably know) are curved, single-edged blades with a circular (or sometimes squared) guard and long grip to be held two-handed. Katanas especially are regarded by many as the finest cutting weapon in military history. But, you know, if I believed that personally then I would rank it #1 instead of here at #2. So the honor of first place instead goes to...

1. Knightly Sword 

Now that's what I call Swords, Volume 1.

The Knightly Sword is the ultimate sword. It's what I think of when I think of a sword. It has a number of other names, including (but not limited to) Arming Sword, Crusader Sword, with some early versions of it also being called Norman Sword. Why the name confusion? Well, because it didn't have a name at the time because when it was used, it was simply just called a "sword" because it was the dominant sword of the era. It's a double-edged, straight blade sword with a cruciform hilt designed for being held in one hand, almost always with a pommel at the bottom. It clearly evolved from the earlier Viking / Carolingian Swords, but added on the key development of the cross-guard (AKA quillon) to protect the user's hand.  Another innovations from the earlier eras of swords included the fact that the Knightly Sword had a better and more slender blade geometry, which moved the center of mass closer to the hilt (improving balance and wieldability, if that's even a word). Why is it #1 though? Well, most of the rest of the top 5 are two-handed swords. Those are indeed super awesome and powerful, but maintaining a lighter, smaller, and more versatile one-handed sword opens up options for the use of a shield, or the even smaller buckler -- which was itself was sort of half-shield and half companion weapon because it was just as effective for bashing against people as it was for deflecting blows. The only other one-handed weapon in the top 5 is the Scimitar which is admittedly also super cool - but while superior to the Knightly Sword when being wielded from a horserider wasn't quite as good for hand-to-hand melee combat (as you saw from my last ranking, I'm a big fan of melee weapons). Also, if you tell me to draw a sword, I will draw this. It's just what I think a sword is. 

Ed Ranks Medieval Melee Weapons

 So medieval warriors killing each other is fun. Let's rank the fun-ness of melee killing weapons that they used. HUZZAH!!!

10. Club

Hit you with me Shillelagh, I will! A-hehehehe!

 I mean this one isn't only a "Medieval" weapon. It's also a cave man weapon. And a 19th-Century Irish Cop weapon (especially if you call it a "billy club" or something like that). And a modern weapon. You can find a club anywhere, pretty much. It's a pretty lazy weapon. I'm not that impressed.

9. Quarterstaff

Medieval Pimps, presumably.

Not quite as lazy as a club, but still basically just a stick. Still, it's a long stick. The people who use them also use all sorts of whirls and cool techniques. At least they do in the movies. I'm sure in real medieval warfare, the only people who used these were the super poor warriors who didn't have anything else. They probably were not trained to do all of that spinning Darth Maul stuff. They probably just hit people with it. Hard.  Although, if they came up to an opponent with any of the below weapons... they'd be done for.

8. Spear-Based Polearm

Glaives, my man. GLAIVES!

Okay, so this category is a little vague.  The term "polearm" itself is a little vague, and there is a lot of wiggle room for what exactly polearms include.  For this category, I'm essentially including all long, pole-like weapons which were primary used in a "stabby" fashion or for impaling.  This includes spears, lances, poles, partisans, etc.  I'm not ranking these that high because they're sort of just "meh." Sure, lances were cool in tournaments. But in a real battle, you'd probably want to get yourself something better than just a long stabbing stick.

7. Poleaxe-Type Weapon

Oh hell yeah. This will do some damage!

This is the other half of the Polearms.  In contrast to the above "stabby" polearms, I'd define these as the "slicy" polearms, e.g. instead of trying to impale someone with these long weapons on poles, instead you treat the weapon more like a long axe and cut.  This category includes bardiches, halberds, glaives, war scythes, etc.  Again, I know this is somewhat difficult to define, especially as many types of polearms are merged designes that include both "stabby" and "slicy" bits so you can do either.  However, if the weapon includes BOTH stabby and slicy, I'm going to categorize it as a slicy-type, and hence as this slightly cooler "poleaxe" melee weapon. Ranking this down at #7 does not mean I think that it's not cool.  Poleaxes are SWEET AS HELL.  It's just that the six weapons below are EVEN SWEETER.

6. War Hammer / Maul

This looks like a pleasant afternoon.

A big hammer that you fuck someone up with. This is awesome. Sometimes it's literally just a huge hammer that you bash people with, like Thor has. But most of the time, it's half-hammer with a blunt end and half-stabby with a sharpened pick end.  Both are super-duper cool as hell.

5. Sword

He looks generally sorry for stabbing that poor bastard.

You might think I'm ranking this surprisingly low. Swords are great and all. But a bit basic.  Besides, there are so many types of cool swords, I might just save further sword discussion to a totally seperate "Ed Ranks Swords" ranking. Yeah. I pretty much have to do that now. Swords rock, however you'll soon see what my particular sick medieval melee killing fetish is. Oh yes you will.

4. Battle Axe

Well, time to hack someone in half!

There is probably a little bit of a crossover between poleaxes and battle axes, but for purposes of my general classification, battle axes have shorter poles/handles and are more for general cleaving by cool-ass dudes spinning around all agile, like. I think of the people with the longer pole-axes being less mobile warriors. I've seen some definitions saying that anything with a pole/handle under 1.5 meters would be a "battle axe" while over would turn it into a poleaxe. Sure, that works for me.

3. Mace

Each and every one of these... awesome! COLLECT THEM ALL.

To some, a mace is just a fancy club that's more metal-based than wood (although the bludgeoning head itself isn't necessarily metal, and could also sometimes be stone or bone). The heads typically include flanges or knobs, which do much better at absolutely destroying whatever it is being bashed into (plate armor, skulls, ribs, arms, you know... all that good stuff).  Something about taking the basic concept of a club ("me hit you with stick") and fashioning it into an elegant, metal bludgeon is so appealing to me.

2. Flail

It was either this... or...

...This! But most likely, it was both.

Okay, this whole "flail" thing is surprisingly controversial. You might think of a flail as the "ball-and-chain" thing, where you hold onto a small wooden stick with one hand... which is connected to a chain...and connected to the other end is a metal ball (typically spiked). One would, hypothetically, swing this thing around and use mechanical advantage to absolutely DESTROY someone with this. Basically the concept is that it would be a metal whip with a mace's head on the end of it. Is this cool as fuck? Hell yes it is, my friends. Hell yes it is. Did it actually exist though? There isn't universal agreement. Many ball-and-chain flails that we often think of from museums wound up being more modern forgeries, leading some to believe they didn't exist at all, and were simply an imaginative weapon created later. Instead, the actual common "flail" weapon appears to be a two-handed weapon with a very short chain of a link or two connected to a long, cylindrical head that's more of a metal "bar" than a ball. This being "the" medieval flail would make sense, as the weapon we call "flail" is really named after a farming tool with the same name designed for threshing grain, and which looks like what this version of the weapon is.  Still, people who are "pro ball-and-chain" point to artwork that shows ball-and-chain flail-like weapons as proof they were real medieval weapons.  Although in fairness, just because something is depicted in art doesn't mean that it's real. Just imagine how horrible it would be if all the stuff Hieronymus Bosch painted was real.  In the end, enough sources have been found to prove that the ball-and-chain-type flail probably existed too, although was not as common as we think it was. I personally think that BOTH versions of this weapon called "flail" are hyper awesome though. So here it is, ranked at #2!

1. Morning Star 

I'd much rather have this than a sword. WHEEEEEEEE!

So this is it, the ultimate super sweet and badass medieval melee weapon.  Is it strange that I basically lumped all poleaxes and polearms and swords and axes into singular categories and said stuff like "eh, a halberd and a glaive are basically the same thing," meanwhile I differentiate a "mace" from a "morning star?" Maybe. Some could probably argue that a morning star is basically a "mace with spikes." I suppose that's true. Yet, I would counter the fact that there are spikes, totally changes what the weapon is and how you use it in battle. Yeah, sure, it's still essentially a weapon you bludgeon people to death with - but it's also stabby too! I will take the bold stance that spike head and a knob or flange head are inherently different melee damaging systems. I've also seen arguments that the morning star isn't even the weapon itself, but is just the "add on" to the weapon to make it more deadly - sort of like putting a bayonet on a rifle. With this arguement, either the mace or the flail can be "upgraded" to "morning star" status by having it's head replaced with a spiked ball or spiked bar. Ehhh. Maybe. Sounds complicated though. I'm just going to go ahead and say that the thing in this damn picture here is what a morning star is, and that a morning star is THE BEST. 

Ed Ranks the Cassadine Family

A bunch of Cassadines.

Hey guys, it's been a minute due to some horrific family tragedy. That sucks. But now my brain is back to partially re-working again.

In a tribute to my awesome mom, I'm going to rank members of the villainous Cassadine family from the ABC Soap Opera General Hospital. Yeah. She loved her some of that terrible show.

15. Dimitri Cassadine - A Cassadine featured briefly in 1986 once they started retconning to create new Cassadines. Pretty non-relevant, and quickly gone from the show.

14. Charlotte Cassadine - A new-ish-ly introduced Cassadine kid (ugh, Soap Opera kids) who is supposed to be the daughter of a Cassadine. Only that Cassadine she is the daughter of is Valentin Cassadine (see directly below), who himself is totally a throwaway Cassadine because he was only retconned into existence recently.

13. Valentin Cassadine - This is just a lame Cassadine who is supposed to be a brother of the much cooler evil Cassadine children like Stavros and Stefan. But he didn't actually exist until 2016 when they said, "Oh, let's just pretend that 35 years ago they always had a brother, but that he was just disowned and nobody talked about him."  Lame that he was never mentioned by his brothers or mom once in the 40 freaking years they were characters on the show.  This is like when Buffy's sister Dawn appeared out of nowhere and they just pretended she had been a character all along.

12. Irina Cassadine - Minor Cassadine introduced as the daughter of Helena in 2011, but killed off after a year. Pretty forgettable.

11. Kristina Cassadine - Another minor Minor Cassadine, introduced in 2001 as the daughter of  Mikkos in 2011, but killed off after about year. Also pretty forgettable, but hey... the actress (Jaime Ray Newman) at least went on to actually do other stuff like The Punisher and Eureka.  Also she gets ranked higher than Irina because she came first, and Irina was just sort of the same thing again.

10. Spencer Cassadine - Son of Nikolas Cassadine and Courtney Matthews, who is herself the sister of mobster Sonny Corinthos. I hate Nikolas and I hate the stupid Corinthos plotlines, so I hate this character too. A very boring and lame child character who isn't even super evil.

9. Tony Cassadine - Youngest of the original Cassadine brothers, but killed off way back in the beginning in 1981 when he accidentally walked into his brother Mikkos's cool ice chamber. Oops. He didn't last long. Still, he gets some credit for being an original.

More like Mediocre Cassadine. AMIRIGHT?

8. Victor Cassadine - One of the original Cassadines from waaaaaay back in 1981. However he was the least important and vanished immediately. That is, until 2014 when they brought him back. With the exact same actor playing him. Wow. 33 years later bringing back the same actor to play a minor character? That's actually pretty good. Points for not being recast, despite his mediocrity. Also points for being one of the originals.

7. Nikolas Cassadine - Brought onto the show in the mid 1990s as a teenage heartthrob and the son of Laura (from Luke and Laura) and Stavros Cassadine. Technically, I think this character was the Cassadine who lasted the longest on the show (although played by different actors over time) and is therefore the most important and notable. But I'm going to rank him down here because he was mostly an annoying, heartthrob, good guy character. Which bores me. This family is supposed to be full of evil supervillains, damnit.

6. Alexis Davis - The only person who is a "Cassadine" who doesn't actually use that name, introduced in 1996 and has been on the show forever with the same actress playing her. So I guess she's like Nikolas as being an actual important and long-lasting character on the show, but for even longer since they did recently kill Nikolas off. Alexis, unfortunately, is a good person and lawyer rather than evil. Too bad. Evil is cool.

5. Petros Cassadine - Sometimes when you're on a soap opera and they kill you off, they bring you back.  Most of the time they just say "He didn't actually die. Never mind." It's sort of cheap, but it's too be expected. Just like comic books. But occasionally they bring an actor back and then they play a different, IDENTICAL character. That's the story of Petros. The original badass Mikkos (John Colicos, more on him later) came back a few years after they killed off Mikkos, this time as Mikkos's identical cousin, Petros. The identical cousin thing is weird, but not unprecedented even for this show. I'm pretty sure that Luke had an identical cousin too.  Anyway, this Cassadine only lasted for a very short time but because he's JOHN FUCKING COLICOS, he gets moved all the way up here.

4. Stefan Cassadine - So I'll start this by noting that the original Cassadine brothers debuted in 1981 was a set of three brothers (led by Mikkos, and with Victor and Tony as his brothers) who were evil and wanted to rule the world. Cool. But they were quickly done away with, and soon after they started debuting new Cassadines. It wasn't until 1996 when the Cassadines had a big comeback in this show that they introduced Stefan as ANOTHER son of Mikkos. I guess he was pretty okay. He certainly lasted on the show for a while. But the actor who played him, was actually more famous for playing an eye-patch guy on NBC's Days of Our Lives. And since that eyepatch guy ("Patch") had an eyepatch, he was obviously much cooler in his eyepatch persona and eventually decided to jump back to be eyepatch guy again because EYEPATCH.

Mr. Frozen Icy Villain Terrorist Guy. Cool?

3. Stavros Cassadine - Stavros debuted waaaaay back in 1983. Since the original Cassadines debuted in 1981, this technically means he wasn't an original one. However, he is the original "next generaton" Cassadine, introduced initially as a cousin, but then retconned to be Mikkos's eldest son and heir to evilness. Back in the day in '83, he was obsessed with Laura and kidnapped her.  That's how in 1996 they introduced Nikolas as a secret love child. He lamely died by falling down some stairs (which doesn't seem that deadly, all things considered) and vanished all the way until 2001 when they brought him back, recast him, and made him a crazy, super-evil villain who had been placed in cryonic suspension for 20 years in a secret room under General Hospital. FUCKING SWEET. He then engaged in some world domination plots involving bioterrorism in the summer of 2001... until... you know... September 11.  After that, the producers of this daytime television show were sort of like, "Shit, I guess we can't do this terrorism plot anymore, huh?" That totally ruined this awesome plotline. God, that Bin Laden sure was a dickhead.

2. Mikkos Cassadine - The ORGINAL OF ALL ORIGINAL Cassadines. Debuted in 1981 with a simple plan - to use a weather machine, controlled by a priceless diamond called the "Ice Princess," which he would use to TAKE OVER THE FUCKING WORLD. HOLY SHIT!!!  Soap Operas had always been about boring shit like drama between rich white aristocratic people.  General Hospital was all about "here are the lives of a bunch of people who work in this city with this Hospital and shit."  But for some reason in 1981, they must have hired a writer who was like, "FUCK IT! Let's just add a James Bond villain and/or Comic Book Supervillain to this daytime drama for middle-aged women." And who did they hire? John Colicos. YES. JOHN COLICOS. I know that might not be the most famous person in the world, but DUDESSSSSS... this guy is Count Baltar from Battlestar Galactica. He is Kor from Star Trek, one of the original Klingons from the Original Series. He was Cromwell in of Anne of the Thousand Days. He was the voice of Apocolypse in the 1990s X-Men Animated Series. He was Nick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. He's been a guest star on shows like The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Gunsmoke, and Mission: Impossible.  HELL YEAHHHHH, MIKKOS!!!!!

White Diamonds.

1. Helena Cassadine

About two months after they killed off Mikkos in September of 1981, they debuted his wife, Helena. She was basically the same as him - an evil super-villainess. Oh, yeah, and they also decided to cast this character with ELIZABETH MOTHERFUCKING TAYLOR. THAT'S RIGHT, ELIZABETH TAYLOR WAS ON GENERAL HOSPITAL, Y'ALL! WHAT THE FUCK?! WHITE DIAMONDS. CLEOPATRA. WEIRD FRIENDSHIP WITH MICHAEL JACKSON. DID I MENTION WHITE DIAMONDS? OH WAIT. I DID. Years later, they'd bring the character back again to continue to be a super evil lady, although this time she was re-cast because honestly, how do you expect an ABC daytime soap to permanently be able to afford Cleopatra?